'Dark Tower' leads box office but casts short shadow

8 August 2017: Sony's sci-fi production "The Dark Tower" led ticket sales in North American theaters this weekend, but its three-day take of a modest $19.2 million fell on a notably sluggish August weekend.

Co-produced by independent studio MRC, the movie based on the best-selling novels by horror and fantasy master Stephen King had the lowest chart-topping weekend take of the year, the Hollywood Reporter noted.

The film stars Tom Taylor as a boy who finds himself in another dimension where a gunslinger (Idris Elba) helps him try to save the world from enemies including a Man in Black (Matthew McConaughey). The film garners a paltry 18 percent approval rating on the Rotten Tomatoes reviews site.

Second in the box office race was war movie "Dunkirk," slipping from the No. 1 spot it occupied at its opening a week earlier. The Warner Bros. film had a three-day take of $17.1 million, according to industry website Exhibitor Relations.

Starring One Direction singer Harry Styles in the retelling of the heroic 1940 evacuation of hundreds of thousands of Allied troops from a beach in northern France, "Dunkirk" has been hailed by many critics as a masterpiece.

In third spot was Sony's "The Emoji Movie," a computer-animated comedy based on -- yes -- those expressive little symbols on smart phones. With an all-star voice cast including James Corden, Anna Faris, Maya Rudolph, Christina Aguilera and Sofia Vergara, the movie netted $12 million -- not so bad for a film that scores a dismal 7 percent on Rotten Tomatoes.

Fourth place went to "Girls Trip" from Universal, at $11.4 million. The raunchy comedy, about the misadventures of a group of lifelong friends who travel to New Orleans for a music festival, stars Queen Latifah and Jada Pinkett Smith.

In fifth was Aviron Pictures' thriller "Kidnap," at $10 million. Halle Berry plays a mother who will do anything to get her kidnapped son back.

Rounding out the top 10 were:

"Spider-Man: Homecoming" ($8.8 million)

"Atomic Blonde" ($8.2 million)

"Detroit" ($7.1 million)

"War for the Planet of the Apes" ($6.2 million

"Despicable Me 3" ($5.4 million)